About

Photo: Lynn Falconer

I’m a freelance writer and editor, as well as a personal finance author, speaker and workshop facilitator.

Since 2005, my articles have appeared regularly in special information reports within the Globe and Mail and Report on Business; I’m grateful to be one of a team of talented writers, editors and designers at RandallAnthony Communications, an organization that produces more than 150 special features each year in co-operation with the Globe and Mail’s advertising department.

Formerly a regular contributor to Alberta Venture Magazine and BCBusiness Magazine, I have also been widely quoted in publications such as Canadian Living and Today’s Parent as a personal finance author. I had the great honour of being Chatelaine Magazine’s Money Expert from 2004 to February 2007, and behind the scenes, I’ve worked for not-for-profit organizations as a writer, editor and communications adviser, in consulting and volunteer roles.

I’ve co-hosted CKNW’s daily Moneyline, guest-hosted Money Talks on the Corus Radio Network, and been a guest of radio and television programs across the country, including Marketplace and CBC NewsWorld.

The author of seven books on personal finance and investment, I’m in the process of e-publishing my first book, Financial Serenity, and also rewriting it as Financial Serenity 2.0, Personal Finance for Entrepreneurs, Artists and Freelancers. I’ve also ghostwritten a successful personal finance book and edited books for other writers.

It was the desire to help people achieve financial well-being that contributed to my successful climb through the ranks of the financial industry, where I worked in many areas of financial services, including tax, RRSP, RRIFs, estates, investments and financial planning. In 1995, after serving as vice president of operations and manager of trust services, I became the only executive vice president of Vantage Securities, a financial services firm with 170 advisers in Alberta and British Columbia and more than $1 billion in assets under administration.

In 1996, struggling to balance the demands of career with the needs of a growing family, I concluded that “having it all” was too much – I was professionally and financially successful, but I wasn’t happy or healthy.

I found I wasn’t alone. As a society, we’re wealthier than ever before, but depression, obesity and chronic disease rates are skyrocketing. We’re staying too long in jobs that aren’t satisfying, and working long hours that make our health and our relationships unsustainable. No matter how much money we manage to accumulate, we worry it won’t be enough. We are always hungry for more. At the same time, we’re starved for meaning, for time – and for rich relationships with family, friends, community and the astonishing planet we inhabit.

My work in the financial industry and as a personal finance and investment writer has convinced me that we can change all of that by changing our relationship to money.

After resigning from what I believed was “the job of a lifetime” in 1996, I began writing my first book, Financial Serenity, and working directly with clients as a financial adviser. In 2000, I left active practice to focus on freelance writing and communications.

The exploration that resulted in the Financial Serenity process, which I mapped in my book of the same name, became my way of life: the means that allowed me to transition from an unsatisfying, stressful struggle to balance work and life, to the realization of my lifelong dreams and purpose. By aligning work, meaning and money, we can achieve our richest possible life – a life that lights us up, is a source of inspiration and energy to those around us, and contributes greatly to healing our broken world.